


and let your feelings wash away

by LunaChi_KuroShihone



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Anger, Angst, Angst and Feels, Childhood Friends, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, Pre-Episode: s12e03 Orphan 55, Spoilers for Episode: s12e01-02 Spyfall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:09:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22149202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaChi_KuroShihone/pseuds/LunaChi_KuroShihone
Summary: Kneel,the Master had said, and the Doctor had done so, hidden rage that had previously been concealed surging to the front, curling under her skin like fires and smoke and venom. There were people around them, always, always, always people around them that can be taken as collateral or as bribes or as damage control, their lives so fleeting that the Master killed another one with the flick of a finger before demanding of her,say my name.
Relationships: The Doctor & The Master (Doctor Who)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 104





	and let your feelings wash away

**Author's Note:**

> Spyfall has _slain me_ goddamnit. I was not ready for that emotional rollercoaster that those two episodes have been. I can only speculate if this is post- or pre- Missy, but no matter what, I am _so on board with it_. have some emotionally-distraught doctor dealing with the aftermath, because I sure as hell aren't, haha
> 
> especially when dhawan!Master asked the Doctor to kneel? or when he'd choked her? pure unhinged, crazy, madness, 10/10 would want to see more. And the reveal?? "spymaster, or Spy Master" I legit did not understand it the first time I saw it and had to rewind, whereas my friend, who's not that big of a fan, got it immediately, so deep in deNial I was. I wanted to bundle O into a warm burrito-blanked and cuddle him a scene beforehand, and then WHAM, _it was I, the Master?_ Genius.
> 
> I am not emotionally ready for this season, I tell you
> 
> anyway, I hope you'll enjoy this !

_Kneel,_ the Master had said, and the Doctor had done so, hidden rage that had previously been concealed surging to the front, curling under her skin like fires and smoke and venom. There were people around them, always, always, always people around them that can be taken as collateral or as bribes or as damage control, their lives so fleeting that the Master killed another one with the flick of a finger before demanding of her, _say my name._

And she does, whispers it, once, twice, a third time, the negative emotions inside her thickening to a sludge of blackness and rage -- emotions she's hoped of having left behind this reincarnation, but which would always and forever be scars on her very being, no matter how much she plays at being friendly and nice and happy and _well_. She's been running on hidden rage for so long she's almost forgotten how _real rage_ feels like, and how it is both empowering and terrifying. She would've snapped, then, in that infinite-long second of time where their eyes met, both kneeling, were it not for Ada interfering, and she clung to that brave human like a lifeline, stuffed all of her anger and negativity back inside of her, until the sludge has turned back to smokiness, and then she'd been all business again; saving the earth and her fam.

But.

But --

This Master, after _Missy_ , he was like a slap in the face; proper mad and deranged, neurotic to the point of unpredictability. He followed her like a mad hound that had caught the promise of weak prey, followed her into the 20th century only for her to foil his scheme, his plans. Only this time, it was not a game between them like so many other times -- the Master and the Doctor, each a side of the same coin, never to separate, never to reconcile. This time, though -- he relished in holding her over the edge of the Eifel Tower by her neck, the pressure making black spots dance in her vision and the previous sludge of anger come back, the madness that had been planted inside his mind by the drums back and worse than when he'd been Harold Saxon.

He was well and truly gone now, so past any possible redemption that it circled back to being laughable. Something inside of him finally snapped after being broken and unhinged for so long, and the Doctor felt her reasoning go with it. She didn't save him from the Nazis, as she could've undoubtedly done, because there _was_ satisfaction in seeing one's longest ~~soulmate~~ _~~friend~~ **enemy**_ finally in chains and hurting and bound, and she felt no remorse at leaving him with this new face to deal with the consequences of his own making. Poisonous satisfaction coursed through her veins as she waited for the elevator to go down, only the knowledge of her two part-time companions waiting for her letting her keep in control.

And in the end, she erased their memories and sent them back to their ordinary lives without once looking back, the aftermath of Donna once again leaving a bitter taste in her mouth as she set off towards Gallifrey. She had failed her previous incarnation, then, because she couldn't keep on going at being happy-go-lucky and friendly, not after she'd tasted this Master and had flown his TARDIS, that age-old madness of his seeping into her bones like cancer.

Her fam didn't know -- couldn't know who the Master truly was, because knowing the Master meant knowing who the Doctor was, in all of its ugly glory. It meant making them see her jagged edges and fraying strands, as she held herself together only because of their presence, her mind still lingering on the brief touch it had been granted, and how infinitely tender and cruel it had been to feel the Master's, after so many years of only feeling cold, human static.

The Master from their academy days was well and truly gone now, she knew, the confession dial she's thrown somewhere into her own TARDIS an apology and a goad and a cry for help all at once, and she knew that she would respond to it with her own broken hearts and old aches.

They had asked her to visit Gallifrey, and the Doctor would not, could not go there, not with them or with any companion that had travelled with her previously, because she still felt close to bursting with anger and rage, felt the Time Lord Victorious shimmering under skin and bones, could understand the Master when he'd told her he got high from killing people at a visceral level that ought to be so, _so wrong_ , because wasn't she supposed to be the good one?

 _But we'd always been the same, no?_ Always, with only a thin line separating the Master and the Doctor, and seeing him again, _now,_ destroying all of her hard work with a single _That's why it's my name! O!_ was enough to send her into a downwards spiral that would last more than only the five previous planets, as Graham so helpfully mentioned. She had failed her current companions in the way she had failed _Rose_ and _Martha Jones_ and so, so many before them, by giving them infinity without the ramifications, and the Doctor could see the strain it put on Jaz's life especially, so bright and similar to Rose that it hurt. She had failed them, by not warning them about the Daleks, or the Master, by bringing them into the lion's den without knowing about it beforehand, like with Martha and Donna.

She had failed them because, undoubtedly, she would do the same again, because it was _the Master,_ her antithesis, her friend, her second-soul; ~~her~~ ~~soulmate~~ , the person she knew best out of all of the billion, trillion people in the universe.

 _And the worst part about this?_ She and O had been _friends._ They had texted and chatted, all the way back starting with the Raggedy Doctor when she'd met him for the first time, and then after she'd lost Clara and didn't remember it, and then when she'd turned into a woman and had gotten her TARDIS back. O had been the best friend she's had since _ages,_ and to find out that he'd been the Master all along hurt as much as getting her hearts ripped out and transplanted back in. And it made her blood boil and her anger curl because it also showed her that there would truly never be someone who could understand her as good and intimately as the Master did, or whom she could understand back. The betrayal hurt the worst because she'd looked _forward_ to travelling with O in the TARDIS, to show him all of the wonders of the universe and time; because she'd foolishly, foolishly _hoped_ for a split-second of time, that the Master would help them catch Barton and they could go off adventuring into space like they'd once promised, so long ago.

But the Master would always be the Master, and it was the Doctor's duty to mitigate his madness and cruelty into something manageable, and sometimes she wondered if it destroyed him ~~_(chipped away at his very being)_~~ as much as it destroyed her, every time they crossed paths on different sides, because it sure as hell hurt, seeing him become more unhinged and dangerous and crazy with power and madness he didn't wish for -- it tore at her resolve and will like sandpaper on cloth, leaving her feeling raw and exposed like a festering wound that could only scab over but never fully heal.

And so the Doctor steeled herself and plastered on a fake _(plastic-y, thin and crumbling)_ smile and turned back to her fam. _"Alright, let's visit a spa!_ I fancy visiting a spa, after everything that happened today, no? We wash the mud and grime off and relax, and drink tiny overpriced cocktails --"

She could see they didn't buy it for one second, but she soldiered on nonetheless, anything to get her mind off the Master and how broken and all-wrong he'd looked ( ~~been~~ **~~behaved~~** ), or how calm and desperate and filled with anger his dial-self had been.

A spa sounded as good as anything right now.


End file.
